Posts Categorized: Appetizers

Last week I wrote about our first meal in Italy with the Motturas—the fineness of the meal and the pleasures of sitting down to many courses. But many courses didn’t mean many elaborate courses but rather food of the simplest order. The first course was composed of nothing more than day-old bread and a few garden vegetables, seasoned with vinegar and oil. When this was done, our host Alessandra disappeared from the table to make the soup course. It too used vegetables from the garden and water. I’ve long espoused the value of water, devoting a whole chapter to its many uses in Ruhlman’s Twenty, and I was pleased to see it used so efficiently here. So much so that I bought a couple of small summer squashes at our Saturday farmers’ market to make Read On »

My Dinner with Pardus Originally posted July 31, 2008 Do you have any veal hearts?” Pardus asked. The vendor, with happiness and surprise, said, “I do!” He pulled it out of the cooler and said, “How about five bucks?” “Sold!” What happens when a chef visits for the weekend? My old instructor and now close friend Mike Pardus (pronounced PAR-dus—some people think because he’s a chef, it’s pronounced par-DOO) visited recently. The main fact about Michael is that he is a cook in every fiber of his body, meaning, in part, that when he’s away from his work as a chef instructor at the CIA, when he can do anything he wants because he’s on holiday, he chooses to cook all day. Which is what we did. An impromptu meal, Cleveland style. The occasion Read On »

Michael is in New York City for the week meeting up with book publishers, OpenSky, and judging Iron Chef. He asked me to repost Carol Blymire’s Q & A on celiac disease. Look forward to a new post from Michael on Monday. And I am hoping for some off-the-cuff photos for this Friday’s post from him. —Emilia Originally posted October 19, 2010 The blog world knows Carol Blymire for her cooking her way through The French Laundry Cookbook (which is how I became acquainted with her). She’s now documenting her adventures in avant-garde home cooking in her new blog, Alinea at Home. By day, she’s a communications and public policy consultant in D.C. Day and night, she lives with celiac, a disease that prevents her body from digesting gluten, diagnosed after years of tests for ALS Read On »